Public Policy is social agreement written down as a universal guide for social action. We at The Policy ThinkShop share information so others can think and act in the best possible understanding of "The Public Interest."

Want to save some green? Go green–as in make your home energy efficient. But who is to say what really defines green and when you have reached it?

“FOR some people there are two important numbers when it comes to buying a car: the price and the miles it does per gallon (for others, looks, style, brand and the whole driving experience are what counts). Property is no different. A cheaper house price will save you money at the time of your purchase, and a high energy-efficiency rating (EER) will save you cash on each month’s energy bill. One problem with the latter is that there are far too many factors in each property to produce a single rating.”

The Economist Magazine provides a world view on how countries are doing for their citizens … The report speaks to quality of life and satisfaction providing an index that measures each country’s status, like a report card, on its population.

The USA used to be number 1 in this index as early as 1988. Today it has fallen to 16th.

This precipitous fall during the last quarter century (1988 to 2012) is a result of the American obsession with taxes, healthcare and education… Not an obsession to fix these things but an incapacity to do so ..

Read the Economist report, it may be an important wakeup call to the 1% who seek more and more while the country cracks and crumbles…

“The life satisfaction scores for 2006 on scale of 1 to 10 for 130 countries from the Gallup Poll are related in a multivariate regression to various factors. As many as 11 indicators are statistically significant. Together these indicators explain some 85% of the inter-country variation in life satisfaction scores. The values of the life satisfaction scores that are predicted by our indicators represent a countrys quality of life index. The coefficients in the estimated equation weight automatically the importance of the various factors. We can utilise the estimated equation for 2006 to calculate index values for year in the past and future, allowing for comparison over time as well across …”

The London Economist provides some sober analysis on the Republican meltdown that represents the Presidential Election of 2012. The Republican disconnect between the young, women and Latinos could spell a new era of demographic consequences that are now clearly irreversible and that will mandate Republican philosophical change that may not be possible for another generation. Millionaire money, gerrymandering and voter suppression is clearly not enough to the blossoming diversity and generational succession that is now apparent in the “NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE.”

“FOR conservatives casting about for comfort, there are plenty of plausible reasons to dismiss talk of a crisis. Mitt Romney could have run a better campaign. He reacted slowly when Barack Obama defined him as a heartless plutocrat, and flip-flopped on policies so frequently that even campaign allies struggled to keep …”

This Economist article is only one soul-searching conservative attempt to explain the current state of the Republican mind. It may take Conservatives, Tea Party stalwarts and Right Wingers another decade to figure it out. By then, the NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE may have moved on. America is moving forward right past the right, its billionaires and its antiquated vision of “a real america”.

A COUPLE of dozen electric cars with fuel cells under the bonnet (in place of the more usual flat-pack of batteries beneath the floor) have been zipping around your correspondent’s neighbourhood for the past few years. Most are FCX Clarity models from Honda, all in the same rich …

A COUPLE of dozen electric cars with fuel cells under the bonnet (in place of the more usual flat-pack of batteries beneath the floor) have been zipping around your correspondent’s neighbourhood for the past few years. Most are FCX Clarity models from Honda, all in the …

I left Los Angeles at 4 in the morning, long before first light, and made it to Bakersfield — the land of oil derricks, lowriders and truck stops with Punjabi food — by 6. Ten minutes later, I was in the land of carrots.

In 2007 climate scientists were shocked when the regular summer retreat of the Arctic’s sea ice went far farther than they had ever seen before. In the spring of that year ice covered just under 15m km2 (5.8m square miles) of ocean—an area 90% as big as Russia. By mid-September, when it reached its minimum, there were just 4.17m km2 left. That is about the area of the European Union minus Greece. Since 1979, when satellites made such measurements possible, there had been …

AMID the wreckage of the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, an agreement that rich countries would, by 2020, furnish developing ones with $100 billion a year to help them mitigate and adapt to global warming looked like a rare achievement. This commitment will also be a big talking point at the next annual UN summit, due to start in Durban on November 28th. With almost no hope of a big new pact, many expect progress on the …

In seemingly endless times of “trash talk” that led to an improbable and unpopular political victory, the newly minted president clamors: “Now arrives the hour of action.” Fleeting relief comes to the nation as the transition […]

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